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7 Branding Secrets: Ready or Not?

By Michele
Schermerhorn

Every company has a brand (how people think of them) whether
they created it through design or accident. By creating your brand
through design, you shape the way you wish your company to be
viewed by customers and potential customers. This will remove some
of the uncertainty concerning what others will expect from you and
say about you. The power of a brand can't be over-estimated. The
Golden Arches are known worldwide.

However, many people confuse a logo with a brand. The logo is a
very small portion of the brand effort, especially during the
startup phases. Later, once your brand has been repeatedly
communicated, in multiple ways, with consistency, the logo can
begin to embody the overall brand. But, it will never be the
brand.

Do you know what makes your company or its products unique? If
you don't you can't begin to establish a brand identity by design.
There are seven elements to remember when designing your brand.

One: Know Your Customers Better Than You Know Yourself

Customers buy for their reasons, not yours. If you want to sell
them your product, you MUST sell to their concerns, not your own.
Every piece of marketing copy must FOCUS upon them. If you don't
speak their language, you don't get their money. With branding as
with selling, if you don't understand your customers, you won't
build a brand of which they want to be a part.

Let's say you were trying to sell a snowboard. To effectively
sell a snowboard to a fifteen year old requires an entirely
different conversation than selling the same item to his mother.
How you brand your product in these two different customer bases is
entirely different if you wish to be successful. If your product
could be sold to a fifteen year old or a 40 year old, you'd better
decide who you are going to focus your branding efforts upon for
the greatest success.

Crawl within your targeted customer's mindset. Understand what
they think about the product, what they want from the product, and
the alternatives they have to the product. Now that you know what
the customer wants, you need to understand your competitive
environment and your competitors.

Two: Understand Your Competitive Environment &
Competitors

Your competitive environment has a major impact on how you brand
your products or your company. For instance, retail is a highly
competitive environment. There are companies that deal in the high
end of the market and those who don't. WalMart has chosen to
compete in the low price arena of retailing. They work hard to
build a brand of "low price, friendly company". They
obviously do it well. All one has to do is look at their financials
to draw that conclusion.

You need to understand your competitive environment as well as
WalMart understands theirs. But how can you do that effectively,
without WalMart's budget?

Start by asking your existing customers, "If you weren't
working with us, with whom would you be working?" Identify the
companies to whom you most often lose business. Learn as much as
you can about these competitors, including how customers perceive
them, what makes them unique, and why they win the business they
do.

Three: Define Your Brand Personality

Brands are like people. They have personalities too. People
choose brands based upon whether or not the characteristics of the
product or company brand fit them. My mother wouldn't be caught
dead in a WalMart. I love a bargain, so I love WalMart. Two
customers. Two different perspectives regarding the same
business.

If you have defined your ideal customer well and understand your
competitive environment, you can select a brand personality which
will appeal to your audience. Think of your brand personality just
like any personality. It will have traits. Choose two or three
personality traits to develop for your business. Will your business
be youthful, fun and irreverent? Will it be conservative,
sophisticated and elite?
Once you have defined the two to three personality traits that
define your business, they must be visible in everything you do.
All advertising, your website, your emails, everything must be
consistent with your brand personality. This also includes your
collateral materials, the people you hire, and even the way you
answer the phone.

Your brand must come through loud and clear at all times. With a
brand also comes a promise. WalMart promises the lowest prices and
friendly people. Your brand will have a promise too.

Four: Make A Brand Promise

Talk with your customers. Understand how they see your business,
and what your brand means to them. Find out what is important to
them about choosing a business like yours and what benefits they
get from doing so. Make sure your brand promise is important and
valuable to the customers you want most. Once you understand your
customers, you can create a brand promise.
Serta, the mattress company, has a promise of "We Make The
World's Best Mattress". Maytag has the lonely repairman,
reinforcing the promise of dependable service and called the
"Dependability People" with the headquarters located at
#1 Dependability Way.

Your brand promise should be stated clearly, in concise language
so everyone in your organization and your customers understand the
promise, just like Maytag's and Serta's promises. Then, you must
bring the brand to life through a brand strategy and action
plan.

Five: Define Your Brand Strategy

Think of a brand strategy as defining the limits of your
approach and the outline of your methods. Later, we will design the
tactics to make it happen.

You now understand your customer and your competitive
environment. Your strategy comes out of that information. Where
will you position yourself? Just as WalMart uses stand-alone stores
rather than join established malls, you must decide how to approach
your environment in order to successfully brand your company or
your products.

You need to develop a brand that is distinct from your
competitors. Many people mistakenly think that by emulating a
dominant brand, they will succeed. In reality, you don't have the
resources necessary to duplicate their strategy. Seek out a niche
of the dominant business' market. You can successfully determine
that niche by asking yourself, "Where are they
vulnerable?"

If your business specializes in a specific product area, such as
sports equipment, build a brand of energy, strength, competition,
and youth. If your advantage is consulting or ideas, make sure your
brand is innovative, exciting, and cutting-edge. If you are the
lowest price option, make sure to look conservative with money. If
your products are more robust, like a John Deere tractor, build a
no-nonsense, industrial-strength feeling into the brand.

Your branding strategy will set the overall limits of your
branding "playing field", now it's time to design the
game plan.

Six: Identify Your Branding Game Plan

Moving to action, you need to define the specific actions you
will take to create your brand. They must be the tangible
demonstration of your company's values and beliefs. They come
directly from your brand personality, brand promise, and brand
strategy.

Southwest Airlines is a great example. Employees dress casually
and have some fun in the way they greet passengers. The company's
symbol on the NYSE is LUV and the name of their in-flight magazine
is Spirit. These actions reinforce Southwest Airlines' brand
personality and brand promise every day.
Think hard about every planned action and its possible
ramifications in your competitive environment. Many companies make
the mistake of taking actions inconsistent with their brand
personality. Don't make that mistake.

If you focus on women, then focus on activities that women
support like breast cancer research and childhood disease. If your
focus is on young males, then make your actions bold and worthy of
bragging. The hardest part of your branding process will not be
designing your tactics. The hardest part is being consistent in
supporting your brand.

Seven: Be Consistent in Action

A brand builds over time. A brand becomes successful after years
and years of consistent action. My grandmother used to say,
"The proof is in the pudding". This is a very descriptive
way of saying "in the end, it's the result that matters".
Keep that in mind as you move forward in building your brand. An
excellent method for helping you maintain consistency in your
branding efforts is to pick a brand personality indistinct from
your own personality. In that way, it won't take as much acting or
thought to be successful. Your brand will become a natural
extension of yourself.

A Final Thought

In today's business climate, the world is highly competitive. It
is important to differentiate your brand. A sound investment is
defining and communicating what is truly special about your
business. Your brand will bring you financial results through loyal
and happy customers. Your brand will tell the world why they would
be crazy not to do business with you.

Michele Schermerhorn calls herself a "Corporate Freedom
Fighter" dedicated to freeing cubicle prisoners to experience
their own successful online business. She has over 30 years
experience in the business world and over 12 years running her own
successful online businesses. She is President of Online Business Institute
Inc., authors a sassy marketing blog, and regularly conducts free online
seminars. Online Business Institute Inc. exists to "Create
Successful Online Business Owners One Person At A Time".

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